Canadian government failing Egypt's prisoners

For almost a year, the Canadian government has quietly supported the Egyptian regime in what Stephen Harper and John Baird have suggested is an aspirational journey to democracy. A quick assessment of the way the Egyptian regime treats journalists and civil servants will tell you otherwise.

For almost a year, the Canadian government has quietly supported the Egyptian regime in what Stephen Harper and John Baird have suggested is an aspirational journey to democracy. A quick assessment of the way the Egyptian regime treats journalists and civil servants will tell you otherwise.

In any country, it is the treatment of journalists and civil servants by those in power that serves as a litmus test for how a country is treating its population at large. Journalists and civil servants drive the change required for a country’s advancements in human rights. The injustices inflicted on them are a front-line indicator of the deeper, systemic injustices occurring as a whole.

Seven-year jail sentences handed down recently to Canadian Mohamed Fahmy, Australian Peter Greste, and their fellow Al Jazeera journalists created a worldwide furor that left our government seemingly unmoved and unwilling to do anything more than release bland statements that further confirmed their support for the Egyptian government. Journalists imprisoned for pursuing fair and balanced stories? This seemed less important than ensuring the Canadian government does not “insult” the Egyptian regime.

To this day, Khaled Al-Qazzaz, a permanent resident of Canada, husband to Canadian Sarah Attia, and father to four Canadian children, has not been charged with a crime, yet he has been imprisoned for a year – the majority of it in solitary confinement in Tora Prison. The prosecutor general of Egypt recently revoked Khaled Al-Qazzaz’s access to visiting family members, and most tellingly, his access to legal representation. This move comes after continued international interest in Al-Qazzaz’s case and the recent publication of open letters by Al-Qazzaz and Attia in international papers. With access to his lawyers now blocked, a fair trial – should he ever be charged – should’t be expected from Egyptian courts. After all, the job of the Egyptian courts is not handing down justice – it’s silencing the voices it no longer wants to contend with.

Before his arrest and imprisonment, Al-Qazzaz was a civil servant. He worked as a staffer in Egypt’s first democratically elected government, and in a letter recently published in the New York Times, he reveals that his work involved interactions with world leaders – both Obama and Hillary Clinton are on the list – to broker peace in volatile regions and to make the empowerment of Egyptian women a primary area of focus for the country.

Al-Qazzaz is a University of Toronto engineering alumnus who involved himself in clubs that focussed on service. He founded the Orphan Sponsorship Program and the Students for World Justice Committee, both of which remain active today. He and Attia returned to Egypt to build a school, which placed community service at its core, and has grown to include more than 1,000 students. Khaled is a change-maker. It is why Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Global Exchange, Code Pink and the United Nations Human Rights Council, have all released statements calling on the Egyptian government to release him.

Journalists and civil servants like Al-Qazzaz, whose health is reportedly deteriorating, are among the more than 22,000 imprisoned without charge since the July 3 coup last year.

After the blatant violations of justice during the trial of Mohamed Fahmy and the outcry of the international community, the Canadian government must recognize the need for a far stronger position. It must be the voice to those who have spent their lives advocating for the voiceless. These are the values that Canada proudly espouses on the world stage. Now is the time to actively embody those values and demand the freedom of Mohamed Fahmy and Khaled Al-Qazzaz.

Rania Lawendy is a human rights activist and mother of four who witnessed the massacre at Rabaa Square in Egypt last summer.

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